Coexistence of single-mode and multi-longitudinal mode emission in the ring laser model

A homogeneously broadened unidirectional ring laser can emit in several longitudinal modes for large enough pump and cavity length because of Rabi splitting induced gain. This is the so called Risken-Nummedal-Graham-Hakeii (RNGH) instability. We investigate numerically the properties of the multi-mode solution. We show that this solution can coexist with the single-mode one, and its stability domain can extend to pump values smaller than the critical pump of the RNGH instability. Moreover, we show that the multi-mode solution for large pump values is affected by two different instabilities: a pitchfork bifurcation, which preserves phase-locking, and a Hopf bifurcation, which destroys it. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.